With rapid growth of mobile data transfer over a high-speed communication network such as 3G or 4G cellular services, authenticating, managing, and controlling such data transfer become increasingly difficult and complicated. A conventional network layout includes Internet, LAN (local area network), and wireless networks having hundreds of network devices such as access switches, routers, and bridges for facilitating data delivery from source devices to destination devices. Authenticating and transferring massive amount of data efficiently between wireless portable devices such as smart phones and laptops over a typical and/or standard network becomes increasingly challenging.
In a wireless mobile network environment, a conventional mobile device uses information stored in a subscriber identity module (“SIM”) card such as International Mobile Subscriber Identity (“IMSI”) to authenticate and/or access wireless networks as well as wired networks for transporting information. To establish a link(s) for information and/or packets transfer between a mobile device and its destination(s) via a core network such as general packet radio service (“GPRS”) core network, the mobile device is typically authenticated using IMSI information before a link can be established. To process and/or classify IMSI and/or packet(s) information associated with a mobile device, a conventional approach is to establish a data structure to store various classification rules in connection to IMSIs and/or packet addresses whereby communication between a mobile and its destination, for example, can be processed quickly using the data stored in the data structure.
For example, IMSI related information, policies, and/or rules may be stored in the data structure or a lookup table. Information stored in the data structure is typically searchable. The IMSI associated with a mobile is classified and/or process based on lookup results obtained from the data structure. A problem associated with the conventional approach of storing such IMSI related classification rules, for instance, is consumption of large amount of memory space. For example, to store classification rules containing a wildcard which covers a range of addresses, memory space required to store such wildcard prefix or suffix can increase exponentially.